What a Captured ISIS Official Revealed About the Terror Group’s Horrific Chemical Weapons

The U.S. military is gathering some crucial information from a senior ISIS operative who was captured in Iraq three weeks ago. According to CNN, U.S. officials confirmed they captured Sleiman Daoud Al-Bakkar, who potentially runs the entire chemical weapons program for ISIS, and through interrogations, determined areas in Iraq “crucial to ISIS’s chemical weapons program.”

That information has in turn been crucial for the U.S. military, which began airstrikes on those areas with the ultimate goal of wiping out ISIS’s “entire chemical weapons enterprise,” primarily the organization’s mustard agent, or Sulfur Mustard, a chemical warfare agent used in artillery shells. The substance causes severe burns of the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, as it can cause harm when inhaled.

According to CNN, the U.S. intelligence community has confirmed 12 cases of mustard agent use and suspects three more, in both Syria and Iraq — though they believe any deaths in connection to those attacks were caused by the artillery itself rather than the agent. “Chemical weapons continue to pose a threat in Syria and Iraq,” director of national intelligence James Clapper recently said in a congressional testimony. “[ISIS] has also used toxic chemicals in Iraq and Syria, including the blister agent Sulfar Mustard. (It’s) the first time an extremist group has produced and used a chemical warfare agent in an attack since Aum Shinrikyo used sarin in Japan in 1995.”

Sleiman was the first operative captured since the Special Operations team, Expeditionary Targeting Forces, started operating in northern Iraq with the purpose of capturing or killing ISIS operatives and gathering intelligence. “It’s a tool that we introduced as part of our — the accelerated operations to conduct raids of various kinds, seizing places and people, freeing hostages and prisoners of ISIL, and making it such that ISIL has to fear that anywhere, anytime, it may be struck,” defense secretary Ash Carter said last month.

As of now, the U.S. military doesn’t believe ISIS has noticed Sleiman is missing, primarily because he has been known to move around Iraq quite a bit and that his capture isn’t jeopardizing the airstrikes. While Sleiman is detained, the military will continue to interrogate him about crucial ISIS personnel and weapons information; but per past U.S. statements that any captured operatives will only be held for a short time, he will later be turned over to the Iraqis or the Kurds.